This invention relates to a printer and printing control method and, more particularly, to a printer and printing control method for performing printing in accordance with an ink-jet printing method.
A printer equipped with a printhead for performing printing in accordance with an ink-jet printing method may use a plurality of head units each having a plurality of ink discharging nozzles. By increasing the memory capacity of such a printer, complicated control becomes possible in which the ink discharging operation is performed simultaneously from a plurality of the ink discharging nozzles or in which a plurality of the head units are driven simultaneously. The result of such control is an increase in the throughput of the printer.
When the overall manufacturing cost of the printer is taken into consideration, however, the cost of the memory cannot be ignored. The more memory capacity is increased, the greater the increase in the manufacturing cost of the apparatus. From the user standpoint, it is preferable to reduce the cost, thus it is unnecessary to provide a printer with more capabilities than are required by the user.
For example, in the case of a printer capable of full-color printing, there are occasions where color printing is not performed very often. Even a color image sometimes is only a mere color line drawing present in part of an image printed in monochrome. Accordingly, sophisticated color printing capabilities are not always required. In such cases a memory having the minimum required storage capacity is satisfactory for the printing operation performed by the printer.